Publishers Visual Editions are a creative studio and joint personality that encompass rigour. It’s founders, Anna Gerber and Britt Iversen didn’t exactly form under the usual pretence of creatively led duos. Anna was a lecturer at the Royal College of Art, Britt worked in advertising at Mother, but the pair didn’t meet in a professional capacity, they met through their children. “Our kids went to quite an uptight nursery, lots of professional parents, we stuck out like sore thumbs,” they explain. From there, a mutual respect for each other grew. “We went out for dinner one night and were just talking how friends talk,” says Anna. “We realised we were so sick of talking and not doing. Our backgrounds were similar, we were not making, not testing, not reaching audiences. That was the beginning nugget of ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we published books that were only like this?’, and it just got out of control.”

Their partnership is one that embodies sisterhood, discussion and excitement. They lean on each other, they are different personally and professionally, which collectively makes them stronger. “Part of the beauty of us being a pair, is also because we’re women,” explains Britt. “We work very well together as a sisterhood, but also because we need to double up sometimes, in certain conversations and situations. There is no doubt that as a creative female partnership we do more than we would on our own. Part of that is because we have different skill sets, but a huge part of it is that we give each other courage.” This courage has allowed Anna and Britt to learn which projects are appropriate for them to embark upon. “We know a project is right when we walk that very thin line of feeling out of our depth, terrified, and totally excited. To walk that balance, you need the right support in place, that is what we give each other as a partnership and a brand. That and a feeling of fuck it, fuck it lets do it, let’s kick some arse. We are more gung-ho with that as women.”

The support that Anna and Britt provide one another and their clients is a nurturing attribute they link to being mothers. “It sounds like such a cliche but becoming a mother for lots of women can be seen as a limitation, from a practical point of view. For us, we find it very fruitful in terms of making, it extenuates the idea that you want to do something worthwhile with your life. This is both to be a role model to your kids, and to prove to yourself that you can be creative and have kids. Having children has brought us opportunities because we’ve been forced to do things differently.”

Visual Editions: We Transfer: Doubt. Time. Magic.

Of course being a mother, goes hand in hand with being a woman, and a female way of approaching projects, commissioning and employing individuals is part of Anna and Britt’s process. “It is important to say that we choose to work with people we love working with, whether that is men or women. By definition we don’t tend to work with any blokes blokes, because we don’t enjoy it. It’s about having respect for the creative process and a co-ownership for the project when it is released. Making sure everyone feels involved in a project, that’s part of being a woman, you allow joint ownership, not old fashioned egotistical chest beating.” In this respect Anna and Britt explain that they tend to “not openly think about gender equality, more looking for people who take their craft seriously, and a passion for what they’re doing, they’re self-starters, they take the initiative to do stuff, that’s what we look for. Everyone we work with is super talented, which comes in many different shapes and sizes”.

A sincere and respectful approach is also how Anna and Britt create connections with clients. “We start with a relationship more than anything, we think of someone who we would love to work with and then a design agency to matchmake with…then you just start flirting with each other in a very female way,” explain the pair. “By building that relationship, we get an understanding of who they are, what they need, what their attraction is to us, and what we need from them. It’s a constant dialogue, a nurturing of that relationship which allows it to last longer.”

That said, Anna elaborates that it is not just a rosy picture of a business, “we love every project genuinely but we have come up against some very difficult situations, that probably have been more difficult with men involved, but we’ve dealt with it in our way,” she tells It’s Nice That. “There is a feminine way of dealing with things and that is okay. We have kicked butt in those scenarios but not in a leaning in way, but in a unique way that represents our partnership, but also in being creative women.”

Within the larger conversation of the gender gap that sits within the creative industry Anna and Britt symbolise the strength and receptivity of female creativity. For Anna and Britt women they admire are those, “who are comfortable in their own skin, smart thinkers, who aren’t defined by gender, and in no way are they criticised by a bloke because of his gender”. Their work and their personalities encourage projects that shouldn’t be completed “because you are a woman or a man, it should never be gender first. It’s just got to be great, otherwise it’s an empty conversation about gender”.

More like this:

Hannah Buckman’s illustrations, with characters all out of proportion, often featuring multiple narratives happening within a larger frame, are instinctual and honest. A Camberwell College of Arts graduate, she depicts the world as she sees it, opening up about her joys and worries through fine-line work, a mixture of media and lavish use of colour.

For Spanish artist, Cristina BanBan, the body and, in particular, the female body, has always been a central figure in her practice. By combining her traditional, academic arts training with her teenage love of anime, Cristina is an artist with a distinctive style, employing neoclassical aesthetics and using the female body “as a channel that allows [her] to articulate certain narratives”.

Let it be known that whittling down a long list of unsung heroines was painfully difficult. Like ants, you may not see unsung heroines in plain sight but when you look closely, there are bloody thousands of them.

Tech touches nearly every facet of our lives, and there aren’t many in today’s society who don’t come into contact with it on a daily, if not hourly, basis. As an industry, however, tech is far from representative of today’s society. Instead it remains a male-dominated sector. But why is that? And how can we tackle this issue?

How We See: Photobooks by Women is the photobook of photobooks. Designed by Laura Coombs and published by 10×10 Photobooks, this comprehensive documentation of photography by women from 1843 to 2018 illustrates the prolific impact that women have contributed to the medium.

I have always found the typical creative career path a bit odd. In the first part of your career, you’re expected to keep your head down and get stuck into grids and layers. Then, a shift happens, and you’re expected to stand-up, lead, inspire, win that pitch and headline that conference. But what if you don’t feel ready yet?

Realist methods in painting often strive for a photographic quality, leaving the viewer amazed and disconcerted by the uncanny closeness to reality. In the photography of Ruud van Empel, however, this trope is inverted. Rather than creating photo-realism within painting, Ruud constructs a kind of photo-artificialism with his photographs that verge on the painterly. In other words, where you might look at a painting by Chuck Close and mistake it for a photograph, you’re likely to take Ruud’s photographs for paintings.

Fashion photography with a pinch of the documentary; photographer Grant James-Thomas stumbled into the hybrid genre of travel fashion photography as a 17-year-old. Growing up on a farm in Wales, he found himself (just a few short years later) shooting for Vogue. Since then he’s travelled the world, photographing editorials in locations ranging from Kenya and Vietnam to Costa Rica, eventually settling in London but continuing to experiment with all kinds of photographic styles and subjects.

Stiya by Cole Barash is a high stylised sequence of images, recently released as a photo book at LA Art Bookfair, published by Deadbeat Club. A dual series, it tells the story of two events – a storm and the birth of his first child – both which lasted for four days. It’s a book which utilises Cole’s idiosyncratic “hyper-focused” method of photography to closely examine the similarities between the two events, comparing them as spaces exclusive to the elements and ubiquitous with change, seclusion and energy.

We all feel lonely from time to time. For some of us, the working hours are the loneliest time of the day especially for some freelancers spending hour after hour tucked away in a studio grafting away at a commission. For the Seoul-based illustrator known as Nano, these emotions are worth portraying, beautifully expressing loneliness in new series of illustrations she’s titled The Lonely People.

Over in Oslo, Norway, Jan Hakon Erichsen has been establishing what can only be described as a very unique artistic practice. Describing himself as a “visual artist and balloon destroyer,” Jan’s work also comes with a disclaimer: “You should really, really not try this at home.”

Having studied at Korean design college Paju Typography Institute, and with a further degree in visual communication from Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel, Seoul-based graphic designer Son Ayong has a pretty good idea of how to capture and convey concepts by paying close attention to form, line and colour in text and image. Her bold poster designs draw on elements of illustration and web-based graphic works to create visual identities that reflect the overarching themes running through exhibitions, programmes, films, festivals, workshops and seminars.

Korean American graphic designer HeeJae Kim’s portfolio is one full of colour and personality. While some familiar elements do appear across his designs, HeeJae’s work is always underpinned by an attitude towards graphic design that sees typographic elements handled in an illustrative manner, a fact that’s inspired by his initial studies in illustration.

Whether or not to study a postgraduate degree in the arts is a question pretty much every undergraduate will ask themselves. But it is a pertinent question particularly within the arts, as the option to spend a few more years developing as a creative is tempting.

A self-confessed “egoist photographer who’s obsessed by his personal aesthetic research”, Leonardo Scotti first began taking pictures as part of the subway graffiti scene in Milan and wider Europe, pursuing personal projects and self-publishing them in the form of photo-zines. Over the past few years, as he’s begun to integrate the ways he approaches commissions and personal work, his practice has evolved to incorporate fashion photography. He tells us: “I found the balance between work and my personal imagery”, which has resulted in fashion shoots that pay close attention to artistic composition, as well as personal work which draws on elements of fashion styling.

Raid is a new publication by Irish graphic designer and developer Simon Sweeney. Currently based in Munich though “leaving for somewhere else in July” (very mysterious), Raid is a unique magazine as it stemmed from the never-ending stream of potential ideas that is a Slack channel. Featuring a host of exciting designers, Raid asks its contributors to imagine a game, and then design its logo.

As a young man, Kazuhiro Aihara dreamt of being a professional snowboarder and was well on his way to making that dream a reality, when all of a sudden it didn’t materialise for a number of reasons. “I felt absolutely defeated in my life,” the Tokyo-based graphic designer tells It’s Nice That. “Around that time, I realised I loved creating graphic designs and, along with snowboarding, I started designing a few different things for fashion and music flyers.”

“Looking back now, I guess my decision to get into graphic design has a lot to do with the fact that I was obsessed with MTV, music magazines, CD artworks, etc as a teenager,” says Felipe Rocha, a Brazilian designer and art director based in New York City. “My dream was to be closer to this ‘world’, and to me, design was the way to get there.”

One of our Ones to Watch 2018, illustrator Jeffrey Cheung has delighted us once again with a new publication of paintings and drawings. The book features his signature energetic nude figures, set forth in vibrant colours, with a touching innocence and simplicity of style. He says of his art: “Over the past few years, my practice has shifted from zines to painting canvas, and decks for queer and trans skateboarders. My practice is fluctuating and has become more involved with creating community space and how my visual art can be used to uplift others.”

“Anderson shelters, used condoms, buried Victorian tannic acid bottles, discarded ring-pull cans, tarmac, railway engineers in high-viz jackets, men in tracksuits, men in dinner suits.” These are just a few of the things that Daniel Soars considers “the essential signs of England,” in a recent piece on Max Porter’s recently-published novel Lanny. These are the signs that pop up throughout Lanny like old Barbara Cartland paperbacks at a Sunday morning car-boot sale. Soars could also be describing the images and atmospheres compiled in photographer Ian Howorth’s latest collection.

Nepalese photographer Uma Bista dedicates her work to addressing issues of gender inequality in South Asia, and raising awareness about the difficulties that women face in their daily lives under the systemic enforcement of patriarchal values and traditions. Having graduated from the International Photography Programme run by Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she now works in Kathmandu as a deputy photo editor at Annapurna Post, a Nepalese daily newspaper.

Tess Smith-Roberts is an illustrator in her final year at Kingston School of Art. Originally from Norwich, she uses bright, bold colour and simple compositions to tells stories, her characters never complete without two black dots for eyes, and a straight line for lips.

“All my typefaces have feminist concepts or thoughts woven into them," says the type and graphic designer Charlotte Rohde. Based out of Amsterdam but having studied in Düsseldorf where the typography is usually very bold – “almost brutal but playful at the same time” – Charlotte’s designs visibly encapsulate the place where she studied while hinting at feminism which adds an emotional value to the text.

Haeri Chung, otherwise known as Super Salad (fantastic name, we know) is a Seoul-based graphic designer mainly working in print. She also founded an independent publishers called Super Salad Stuff which is where her nickname comes from, and where she compiles all her self-initiated projects as a way to keep them alive and healthy. Contributing these self-published publications to art and books fairs every year, she also distributes free papers on a wide range of topics from the subject of how to tie different knots, to documenting the inherent design applied to air mail.

Even if you have attended any kind of sports game in the Massachusetts area recently, chances are you probably haven’t spotted the photographer Pelle Cass. His images, on the other hand, would be pretty difficult to overlook.

Caricom is the magazine using football’s ability to encourage a sense of community among fans of differing backgrounds to tackle subjects absent from mainstream sports media. In particular, it recognises the need to see “football and fan culture examined through the under-explored lens of the black experience in Great Britain and beyond”. Founded by writer Calum Jacobs and Shawn Sawyers, Caricom is now in its second issue; a more refined, more diverse and even more celebratory issue.

“Imagine a time where nature and civilisation are engaged in the ultimate power struggle… Who will reign supreme? Who will achieve destruction on a level never imagined?” So speaks the narrator in the script for a virtual reality game interrogating the threat and fear of climate change, dreamt up by California-based visual artist Veronica Graham. In her new Risograph-printed publication, NAT vs CIV, self-published under the moniker Most Ancient, Veronica creates a series of storyboards that envision how the game will play out in its digitised form.

When Jieun Lee and a group of her friends traveled to Australia last year, the Suwon-based illustrator took the opportunity to paint the “good and warm” urban landscapes she vividly remembers. “These are the places where I fell in love with traveling," she tells It’s Nice That. Photographing a bank imagery that signify these feelings, Jieun then started painting from these photographs once she was back in Korea, adding a dash of Hockney’s colour palette to the charming paintings.

China’s biggest city, Shanghai, located on the country’s central coast and most well known for its global buzz in the finance world, is now also tackling the wonderful world of independent publishing through the Shanghai Art Book Fair.

Welcome to the first in a new series we’re launching here at It’s Nice That. Called Double Click, each month it will bring you a round-up of some of our favourite websites and digital designs floating around out there on the world wide web. Whether they employ lateral thinking to show us a new way of navigating a site, use animation to enhance the reading experience, or feature some downright bonkers interactions, we’ll be chatting to the creators of each site to find out more about the thinking that went into the design.

It’s not every day that a successful global fashion brand allows itself and its message to be interpreted by someone from outside the company. But that’s exactly what Paul Smith has done with a wonderfully weird new book, created by James Theseus Buck and Luke Brooks, otherwise known as Rottingdean Bazaar.

The last time we wrote about illustrator and animator Dylan Jones, we were fascinated by the mysterious figure calling himself Hologram Ceiling and producing fantastically absurd, squiggly drawings on coloured paper in bright pastels and pencil. Since then, Dylan has produced three mini publications with Gridlords, as well as continuing to create his signature bizarre, hallucinatory illustrations, which take our weirdest fantasies and reflect them back at us in a funhouse mirror.

Photographer Dustin Thierry, born on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, is now based in Amsterdam where he uses his camera to bolster communities he is both a part of, and feels a responsibility towards. Working on long-term projects, his images are sensitive and full of joy, not to mention beautiful, and tackle themes surrounding race, gender, sexuality, and vulnerable minorities.

Part magazine, part photo book, Bill is an annual photography publication by Roma which describes its initiative as “prioritising visual reading without distraction”. With editing and creative direction by graphic designer Julie Peeters, Bill collates new or unpublished work from 12 contributing photographers and presents the images with no accompanying text, upholding the capacity of pictures to speak for themselves.

Welcome to the first of our brand new series, In Conversation, a new fortnightly interview with a leading light from the world of creativity. Every other Monday, we’ll publish a new Q&A here on It’s Nice That. Today, for the first instalment, we chat to Los Angeles-based German artist Thomas Demand.

We use cookies on this website to analyse your use of our products and services, provide content from third parties and assist with our marketing efforts. Learn more about our use of cookies and available controls: cookie policy. Please be aware that your experience may be disrupted until you accept cookies.